


The Thread of Life

by TardisInWonderland



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-03 16:10:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisInWonderland/pseuds/TardisInWonderland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The three spinner sisters had taken care of many children in their time. Some passed through, and some went on to do greater things, but none had ever stayed with them as long as Rumpelstiltskin... not until a little girl named Isabella French comes into their lives.</p><p>Rum and Belle grow up together. This is their story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Spinner

**Author's Note:**

> This sprung from the idea that Rumple was raised by the three fates, and expanded from there. The rating may possibly go up in part 2.

The first time Rumpelstiltskin met Belle, she was four years old, and he was fourteen.

He had always been the smallest of the boys, and thus the easiest to be picked on, even more so because his aunts were spinners and his father was a coward. He tried to fight back, he truly did, but he simply didn’t have the strength. A ring of other boys surrounded him in a small alley, stones in hand. Rumpelstiltskin would be black and blue tonight before they were through, but he would survive.

The bruises would heal, eventually. They always healed.

The scars from their words never did.

Coward. Imbecile. Cretin. Scum. They rang out in his mind at night even as he swore to prove them wrong when he was older, when he was stronger. Even as he swore that he would never turn out like his father.

The first of the blows came, and Rumpelstiltskin braced himself for another when he heard a dull _thwack_ from above where he lay curled on the ground, and a cry. 

“Let. Him. Go.” 

He risked a glance up to see one of the boys holding a hand to his bleeding forehead, and at the other end of the alley, a small girl with a slingshot and a pouch of stones.

“Run away, kid. This isn’t your fight-”

Another stone cut him off. 

“Back away, and I promise I won’t take your eyes out,” she snapped.

“You couldn’t hit them,” another boy scoffed.

“Try me.” 

Needless to say, that was the day that a four year old girl sent five big boys scampering away from her and her slingshot. 

“Are you Rumpelstiltskin?” she asked, tucking her slingshot into her belt and offering her hand. He took it and stood up, surprised at how small she actually was.

“Yes,” he mumbled, brushing himself off.

“Lachesis wanted me to come and find you. She says it’s your turn to cook.” The little girl spoke very matter-of-factly, turned on her heel, and walked down the alley without waiting for a response.

“Lachesis… are you the new one?” he asked, catching up to her without trouble. His legs were much longer, and she wasn’t even walking quickly.

“My _name_ is Isabelle,” she huffed, annoyed. 

“Look, wait. Sorry.” Rumpelstiltskin stopped in his tracks, crouching down to her height. Her lips were set in a straight line, bright blue eyes wide. She was like a tiny little dark-haired doll (if a little dirty), so out of place in this war torn town. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she smiled faintly, but it faded quickly. “You shouldn’t let them push you around, you know.” She started to walk towards the Urdur sisters’ home, this time with Rumpelstiltskin beside her.

“What do you know about that?”

“I know what I saw,” Isabelle said with a shrug. “I know you let them scare you.”

“I’m not a _coward_ -”

“I never said you were,” she scolded. Rumpelstiltskin pulled a face, thankful she was too short to see it. “Being a coward isn’t the same as being afraid.”

“You didn’t look afraid,” he grumbled, sulking. She looked up at him curiously, head slightly tilted to one side. “Being fearless isn’t the same thing as being brave, either.”

“How old are you?” Rumpelstiltskin asked suddenly, curious. If she was older then she was certainly tiny, no more than three feet tall or so, but she talked like she thought herself a tiny adult.

“Four and a half, thank you very much.”

He was about to ask how she knew all this at four and a half, but they had arrived at the cottage door, and Lachesis was waiting for them, beckoning them inside. 

“Ah, I see you’ve met little Isabelle,” she said softly. Lachesis was the middle of the three spinner sisters that were Rumpelstiltskin’s only family. They had adopted him as a child, and once in a while they would take on another charge for a few months or a year, but sooner or later the child in question always left. Rumpelstiltskin was the only one who stayed.

“Aye,” he nodded, watching as the girl hung her cloak on a peg and went over to talk to blind, grandmotherly old Atropos, sitting by the fire and gently caressing a strand of woolen thread between her fingers. Most of the new ones were afraid of her, shying away for weeks or months. She tended to leave you with a cold feeling in your stomach if you weren’t familiar with her… It even still happened to Rumpelstiltskin sometimes, and he’d lived here almost all his life.

Ever since his father abandoned him.

“Come help me with the soup, boy, and I’ll tell you about her.” Lachesis beckoned him towards the small kitchen, where there was already a pot on the stove and vegetables to be chopped on the counter.

“Why is she here?” he asked slowly. Every time it was something different. Sometimes they were on the run, sometimes looking for a new family, and other times his aunts refused to tell him anything about their purpose in the house at all. He didn’t press for information on those nights- the women could be very scary when they wanted to.

“She’s very special, this one,” Lachesis said, dumping a handful of carrots into the pot. “I need you to take good care of her, son.”

Son. She only called him that when the other two sisters weren’t around, or when she needed something from him desperately.

“I rather thing she’s taking better care of me…” he mumbled. When the matron raised an eyebrow he was forced to recollect the incident in the alley, admitting that he might have a bruise or two under his shirt.

“What do I keep telling you, son?” she shook her head, abandoning the soup and pulling the ointment from the kitchen cabinet. “You can’t keep letting them do this-”

“Then what do you suggest I _do_ , Aunt?” Rumpelstiltskin sighed. “They’re bigger and stronger, and-”  
“And your little Isabelle fended them off with a slingshot,” Lachesis pointed out, sliding the jar over to Rumpelstiltskin. He knew how to tend to his own injuries by now. There was no need for her to supervise.

Rumpstilskin didn’t respond to her last comment, twiddling the lid to the jar in his hands.

“Oh… I’m sorry, dearie,” she crooned, petting his hair slightly. “I don’t mean to be unkind, but I need you to know this. I need you to know how wonderful you have the potential to be, and I need you to be-”

“Lachesis!” A voice came from the den. Atropos. “Chattering is useless. Don’t you think Clotho could use him at the wheel tonight?”

Lachesis went red in the face, embarrassed for some reason, and shooed Rumpelstiltskin towards the den, where Clotho was waiting at one of their two spinning wheels. Isabelle sat in front of the fire with Atropos, reading to her out of a book in her lap. Clotho sat at her wheel, spinning thread. She never seemed to stop spinning.

The youngest of the three sisters, she seemed to be the only one without a physical imperfection. Atropos was blind, obviously, and somehow Lachesis’ bright smile was never dampened by her missing tooth, but Clotho seemed to be alright… at first glance.

If you looked a little deeper, it was easy to see that her hands only stayed steady when she spun. The rest of the time they shook and sometimes caused her pain, making it impossible for her to do other housework. 

She was teaching Rumpelstiltskin to spin, though.

Atropos used to spin, once upon a time, and Lachesis was once an accomplished weaver, but as Atropos lost her sight Lachesis had to take over the common household chores, and Clotho spun the thread that was their livelihood (or at least that was what they told the boy they adopted). If he wanted to earn a living, he needed a trade, and the four of them had agreed that he should learn to spin.

Clotho was the best in their village, and her thread fetched fine prices. They weren’t rich by any means, not with four of them living off of one person’s spinning and what little washing and odd jobs Rumpelstiltskin and Lachesis could accomplish between them, but they had enough to get by. 

Spinning was a good trade, a peaceful trade, and a noble trade by all the sisters’ standards.

Besides, though he wasn’t strong yet, Lachesis maintained that one day he _would_ be, and they put him to work outside chopping wood and working with their few animals to prove it. He wasn’t spectacular at the heavy work, thought he was learning, but his nimble fingers seemed to have been made for spinning.

The wheel was his home. It felt peaceful to sit by it and spin.

Tonight, with thoughts tumbling around in his mind, Clotho beside him at her own wheel, and the little girl’s voice in the background spouting out a tale of adventure, it calmed him. The motion of the spokes and the pleasant hum transported him to another place, a place where his father wasn’t a coward and he was strong and brave, a place where he had all the love he could ever want and the power to protect those that he loved…

Things were alright here, but the spinning wheel took him to a place that was better.

X

He never found out any more about where Isabelle came from.

Any time Lachesis looked like she would bring it up, Atropos turned her blind eyes in their direction and all thought of explanation was immediately silenced. Clotho was silent by habit, and Isabelle herself didn’t seem to remember her birth family. According to her, she’d been bounced from place to place since she could remember.

Isabelle was always bright for her age, almost to the point that it scared him, but Rumpelstiltskin soon became used to the curious voice following him around, prattling on about some things and asking questions about others. She followed him to the market and did her best to help him with the yard work even though she was weaker than he was. Her slingshot came in handy several times, though, in dispelling small, hungry animals with very sharp teeth threatening to attack them both.

And if there happened to be a little more meat in their dinner those nights, no one mentioned it.

She watched him at the wheel sometimes, staring at his fingers as if to learn the art through watching and memorizing, though Clotho would not teach her.

“She is a weaver,” she’d said decisively. “You are a spinner. That is the way of things… Lachesis will have to teach her.”

But the woman with the missing tooth had yet to offer to teach her the trade, or even mention anything to her. Come to think of it, there wasn’t even a loom anywhere in the house. Isabelle was certainly smart enough to learn. Perhaps they were waiting until she wasn’t quite so small, in order to let her enjoy her childhood while she had it.

The sisters had tried that with Rumpelstiltskin, but it hadn’t worked out so well (bruises and bullying being only some of the bad side of the results). He preferred to stay at home by the wheel, learning a trade, because the village pushed him there. Isabelle preferred to stay at home reading or helping simply because she wanted to.

She was a pretty little child and the village liked her well enough. She could have gone outside and played, but every day that she tried she came home around lunch and didn’t venture out again. Too intelligent for children her own age, Rumpelstiltskin imagined, and too little to talk to the ones who might understand her.

That was how she became his constant companion. 

Isabelle was quiet by nature, but if anyone pushed her too far she could be snippy and downright dangerous with that slingshot of hers. Most of the rougher children stayed clear of Rumpelstiltskin when she was around, though that didn’t stop the teasing about a little girl protecting him.

He would take that over the daily beatings, though, and rather Belle, who would shout back at them that they were the ones who couldn’t handle a little girl, than anyone else.

She would still read to Atropos in the evenings, but during the day she would walk about with Rumpelstiltskin, always with her slingshot tucked into her belt, her security blanket against the unfamiliar outdoors. At dinner she would sit beside him, and sometimes, on nights that Atropos went to bed early, she would read to him or ask him questions as he sat at the wheel.

“Rum… why do you spin so much?” She looked up at him from her spot on the floor, curled up and leaning against the wall with a book.

“We need the thread, little Belle.” It was his nickname for her, something that he thought fit her quiet, curious nature than a name as grand and flamboyant as Isabelle.

“Why?

“For money, to buy food and cloth, and other things we might need.”

“Oh,” she bit her lip, holding back another thought. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” she shook her head. “Atropos says I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

Not wanting to invoke the wrath of the oldest Urdur sister, Rumpelstiltskin simply left it at that. 

X

As they grew older, Belle spent more time inside the house with Lachesis and less outside with Rumpelstiltskin. The work made him stronger, more lean and less twiggy, and though he never saw Belle weave he assumed that she must be doing some kind of work, because their income increased. 

He never questioned why Belle never left, why she stayed with them longer than any other charge ever had. He liked having her there, and he didn’t want to ruin it, afraid even the second he suggested she’d been there such a long time Belle would disappear forever.

When she was ten she stopped carrying her slingshot and started wearing longer dresses. Rumpelstiltskin barely noticed the change until she started tripping over the skirts, persuading Lachesis to let him take them hem up an inch or two to prevent her from hurting herself. As brave as she could be, Belle was also inherently clumsy… and so it was that she was the only girl in the village whose shoes showed ever so slightly at the hem of her dress.

Belle took over selling their wares on market day for the most part, but there was one day that he decided to accompany her. Lachesis and Clotho had dissuaded him from this to begin with, but another of Atropos’ looks had caused them to give into his wishes. He was twenty-eight years old, a man grown, and old enough to make his own decisions.

So he walked beside eighteen-year-old Belle into the market, and he sat beside her as she sold blankets and thread dyed in beautiful colors, and even a few peculiar little bottles that he thought it best not to question. During one of her deals, his eyes wandered to the other stalls, and to the other people passing by…  
That was when he first saw her.

Her hair was tucked into a bonnet, but a few wild curls escaped, black as night and framing her face beautifully. She was tall and thin, and when she caught Rumpelstiltskin staring she only smiled prettily from beneath her lashes, blushed, and turned away.

“Belle?” he asked absentmindedly. “Who is that?”

“Hm?” She turned away, finished with her customer, picking out the face he was talking about. “Oh, that’s the blacksmith’s daughter, Milah. They moved here recently. She’s nice.” Belle shrugged and took a tally of their wares, ready to close up shop for the evening. The sun was beginning to set, and they would need time to make it home before dark.

She gathered the things into her large basket while Rumpelstiltskin absentmindedly helped her. The word “moonstruck” floated around in his mind- he had previously thought that he’d never know what it felt like, but now he did.

He would talk to her before he left for home, he would- 

“Excuse me?” 

Rumpelstiltskin and Belle both looked up from their task. Milah was standing next to their stall. He did his best not to stare as Belle smiled and shook her hand 

“It’s good to see you- how goes the move?” she asked with polite interest.

“We’re almost settled,” Milah said, directing her words to Belle though her eyes kept flicking back to Rumpelstiltskin. “Is this your brother?”

“No-” said Belle.

“Yes-” said Rumpelstiltskin.

“It’s… complicated,” they both mumbled, looking at each other.

“This is Rumpelstiltskin,” Belle mumbled, very clearly catching the looks that he was sending Milah.

“Nice to meet you,” Milah said. “Do you come to market day every week?”

“Just this week,” Belle said, wrapping her cloak back around her shoulders.

“A-and I’ll be here next week,” Rumpelstiltskin said quickly. 

“Good,” their visitor smiled. “I’ll see you next week, then.”

Milah walked off, Rumpelstiltskin staring after her. He didn’t notice the way Belle bit her lip, or the way she was quiet the entire walk back home, or how she rushed inside from the dark night before he could catch a glimpse of her face in the light, leaving the basket haphazardly on the kitchen table.

He never noticed, not until it was far too late.

X

After that incident, Rumpelstiltskin came with her to the market every week. 

Every week she had to pretend like she didn’t notice, like she did see the glances they exchanged or the little touches, like she didn’t know where it was he snuck off to during the days, and worst of all… she had to pretend that even if she did notice all those things, she didn’t care.

Market days were the worst, because she had to stand there and _take it_. She had to stand through the insult of her only friend completely ignoring her existence for someone else, and it hurt like a knife through her heart.

She sat on her bed in her attic bedroom one evening after market day, tears streaming down her face, when Lachesis knocked softly on her door. Belle didn’t need to speak to give her permission to enter.

“Sweetheart…” The woman who was the closest thing she’d ever had to a mother was at her side in moments, holding her close while she shook with sobs. Rumpelstiltskin was outside, probably still thinking about _her_. He wouldn’t be able to hear Belle crying.

“I can’t do it anymore,” she choked out between breaths. “I can’t. It’s been three months, and- and- and-” 

She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“You could leave if you wanted,” Lachesis said, stroking her hair soothingly. 

“You know I can’t do that,” Belle shook her head. “I have so much to learn. And foresight… I can’t manage it on my own.”

What Rumpelstiltskin didn’t realize (and in fact, had never been _told_ ) was that there are many types of weavers and many types of spinners. Some are the physical kind- weavers of cloth. Some are the emotional kind- weavers of love and hate and trickery. 

Some are the magical kind.

Weavers of spells.

Isabella had a very small spark of something in her that caught the attention of Atropos from the moment she was born. It wasn’t powerful, but with nurturing and care it could be, and her destiny was entwined with one who would someday be more powerful than even the Urdur sisters could predict.

Rumpelstiltskin.

That was why they had never left. All the children who had come and gone had changed, and their paths took them in a different direction, but these two were different. All had been called by one of the Urdur sisters, but only two remained… the two who were found by Atropos.

And when you catch the attention of Death herself, they aren’t likely to let you go any time soon.

The three sisters, the ones with so many names throughout history that it is difficult to keep track of them all, had picked Belle and Rumpelstiltskin specifically for their magical potential. Rumpelstiltskin had been kept away from his for many reasons, but Belle studied spells wit Lachesis every day. They made potions and simple remedies for village healers to be sold at the market, not enough to arouse suspicion but enough to bring in a little extra money.

Even after living with the Urdur sisters for fourteen years, she felt she hadn’t learned enough. She couldn’t control her magic as much as she would have liked, and as a woman under the apprenticeship of the Urdur sisters, Belle was forbidden to meddle in the lives of other people. She could never look out for her own interests, always putting what others wanted first. T was her blessing and her curse- a healer was a selfless branch of magic, as was a seer. 

There was only one possible path left to take.

“Then what do you intend to do, dearie?” Lachesis asked softly.

“Can you give me any advice?” Belle sniffed. Her adopted aunt thought for a moment, sifting through things.

“I’m afraid not, my child.”

One thing Belle had learned from the sisters was that they all could see the future. That gift came with a price, as did any magic (even small magic), and sometimes the price was too high for the information she needed. It was always better to ask _if_ they would give advice, rather than asking outright for it. They knew if the price was too high.

“Then I suppose… I suppose I have to let him fall in love with her…”

It hurt to say. It physically hurt her, but it was a necessary evil. In hindsight, she wasn’t sure when she’d fallen in love with Rum… but she loved him. She loved him like nothing else in the world, and it pained her that he looked right through her for the newest pretty face in town, the only woman who hadn’t seen him grow up and didn’t know his history, the person who obviously thought him as handsome and charming as Belle herself did…

It pained her that he still thought of her as a child, as the little girl with the slingshot, as the awkward preteen tripping over her long skirts.

She _loved_ him. Why couldn’t he see that?

X

Belle watched in silence as her love began courting her friend, watched as they slowly developed affections for each other, watched as they fell in love… And for a while, he was happy. He was so happy, and it tore her apart to know that he was happy. She felt selfish and wicked for wanting him for herself, and horrible for wishing that he’d never met Milah.

She felt awful for wishing that she even had a chance.

Milah was nice, and closer to Rum’s age. She was kind and pretty, and she was sensible enough. Belle had nothing against her in particular, and she did her best to be friendly. It made it all the worse that Milah liked her and wanted her around, treated her like a friend… like the sister of the man she was planning to marry.

It was torture.

The day that Rumpelstiltskin and Milah were married, the Urdur sisters disappeared (without giving the couple their blessing; a bad sign, mind you). They left a will behind bequeathing the house to Belle, the spinning wheels to Rumpelstiltskin, and dividing the furniture and a little money between them both. It was enough to start the couple off with their new life, but the loss of her family crushed Belle to pieces.

She put on a brave face her Rum, for her friend and her love, and for his new wife, and if she cried herself to sleep at night, then what? The house was far enough away that no one noticed. No one could hear her.

She studied magic from the books that Atropos left behind for her, little things here and there, learning about herself and the powers she’d been granted. The sisters could be called any time she needed them, this was true… but Belle knew the rules. You could call on them, but they would only answer three questions, and who knows how long it might be before you could call on them again.

It would be wise to save her questions for a dire time.

Belle came over every now and then to talk to Milah, to sit with Rumpelstiltskin and share a smile or a laugh, but her time with him was always cut short by an uncomfortable look from the wife. Perhaps she didn’t like sharing Rum any more than Belle did.

That was good, in a way. If she took consolation in anything it was the fact that he seemed to be loved, and he seemed to be truly in love. If her heart was broken, she could shoulder the weight for the sake of his happiness.

Then came the day that Rumpelstiltskin went off to war.

Or rather, the day he came back from war.

Belle hadn’t wanted him to go, and neither had Milah. They could picture him lying on a bloody battlefield, the life gone from his eyes... but it turned out that they never had time to worry for too long. Instead, there was a baby to worry about. Belle stayed with her all through the pregnancy, did everything she could to make sure the child would be healthy and strong, and that the birth would cause the least amount of pain possible for Milah. She did her best not to think about how the child had come to be, about what touches and caresses she would never feel…

He had been married for two years, and she still couldn’t shake Rum. 

“How come you’ve never been courted, Belle?” Milah asked, rocking her son in her arms gently.

“I was, once…” she mumbled, sweeping a pile of dust out the door. “It didn’t work out well.” He was a horrible man who only wanted to take advantage of her, but Belle had been trying to soothe the ache of Rumpelstiltskin’s desertion… It had ended very quickly for many reasons.

“So you’ve given up?” Milah looked almost pitifully sad.

“I… suppose so.” Belle nodded, hoping that she wouldn’t catch the tone of despair.

“You shouldn’t give up on love, sweetheart. There’s someone for everyone out there.” Belle’s breath caught in her throat, and she forced herself not to look up.

“Not for me.”

That was when the rumors started.

The talk was all over the village- Rumpelstiltskin the coward had injured himself to avoid going to war, had bashed his foot in with a hammer. Milah denied it at first, and Belle didn’t want to believe it, but the more people talked, the more it seemed true. Everything changed the night Rumpelstiltskin crashed into the cottage, frantic and limping, still in his soldier’s uniform, staring at the baby in Milah’s arms with all the love in the world. He was back from the war, and apparently the stories had all been right.

“I came back- I came back for you, don’t you understand?!” he cried, desperate. Belle thought it the right moment to slip out the door, and she waited outside as their muffled yelling finished before slipping back in.

Rum held his son in his arms, crooning to him so softly that she couldn’t make out the words.

“Rum?” Belle’s voice shook against her will.

“My Belle,” he smiled sadly at the use of her childhood name for him, disregarding the obvious amount of pain he was in for a moment.

They didn’t speak for a long time, Rumpelstiltskin still staring at his child, and Belle wishing she could get a better look at his injury- perhaps there was something she could do for him yet. She was a healer by nature, after all…

“Do you think I was wrong to come back, too?” he asked. “Do you think I’m the coward everyone says I am?” He looked over at her, brown eyes brimming with tears, awaiting judgment.

“Do you remember what I told you the day I met you?” she asked.

“What was that?”

“I said that being a coward isn’t the same as being afraid,” Belle risked resting a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. “It’s isn’t cowardly to want your son to have a father, and frankly, I don’t think I’d have the strength to injure myself like you did.”

“But, Belle, I-” he wetted his lips, gathering his nerves. “I ran from death. Isn’t that what all cowards do? No one can ever excuse what I’ve done.” She wanted to hug him, to hold him close like he held her during storms as a child, tell him everything would be alright, tell him that things would pass… Tell him that she loved him.

She simply took a deep breath, and spoke.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” Belle said softly, “I have yet to meet a soul on this earth who isn’t in some way afraid to die. And… I don’t think it’s so important that people excuse what you did, so long as things are stronger through their forgiveness.”

“You are wise beyond your years, my Belle.” A tear rolled down his cheek, and Belle fought not to cry herself.

If only she could give him a little of that wisdom. Perhaps he would open his eyes…

X

The night that Milah was kidnapped (or ran away, as they would later learn), Belle was there, waiting with Baelfire. She beat Rum home, planning on helping Milah with dinner and visiting the boy, but when she got there Bae was alone.

Mama had just left, he said.

Belle made supper for him and put him to bed. She was waiting by the fore when Rumpelstiltskin came home. To her surprise, he didn’t register even the slightest bit of shock when she told him that Milah was gone.

“Does this happen often?”

He didn’t answer before he walked out the door, headed for the tavern.

Ever since Bae’s birth, their relationship had been deteriorating, and Belle had deemed it wise to simply stay away. It would be time for her to move to a new place soon, she realized. Things would start to look suspicious if she stayed here too long, as much as it pained her to leave Rumpelstiltskin behind. However, there was the small problem that she wasn’t aging.

It had taken her a while to notice. In fact, it had taken her until she read a book on the life cycles of witches and wizards to notice. According to the text, she could possibly liv for five hundred years or longer. It all depended on how much magic she handled or had been exposed to, and how much was inside of her.

Considering that she lived fifteen years of her life with the Urdur sisters… five hundred years was probably several centuries too short.

If Belle stayed in town for too long, things would look bad, but for now… for now she sat at a small table in front of a fire, comforting someone that she knew now would never love her, not in the way she loved him.

And then one day, they disappeared.

She came over to their little house, and they were gone, leaving only a note with her name on it and an empty hut in their place.

_Dear Belle,_  
 _Bae and I are going away. I will keep him out of this war if it is the last thing I ever do. I’ll be a father to him like I should have all along. Thank you for all your love and care, and for being kind to him- to both of us._  
 _I hope I have the honor of meeting you again one day._  
 _-Rum_

Belle tucked the letter in her apron pocket and turned back for home. She did not cry.

She _would _not cry.__


	2. The Allotter

It was another five years before they saw each other again.

Rumpelstiltskin was roaming the forest, in search of unicorn hair for a certain potion he was working on, and he heard a moan from the side of the path. Against his better judgment, he stopped, walking over carefully to the source of the noise.

It was a woman, on her side on the forest floor, tangled up in a bloodied cape.

She was beautiful- even from a short distance it was easy to tell. Her petite form seemed graceful and her porcelain skin was a lovely contrast to her dark hair. As his eyes scanned over her face he noted red, full lips, slightly parted from the pain of her injury, but he didn’t truly know her until her eyes flickered open.  
He would know those eyes anywhere.

“Belle,” he whispered, words caught in his throat. She jerked and tried to scuttle away from him, but her wound made it impossible.

“N-no, please…” she panted, clutching her side.

“It’s me.” he said slowly, crouching down beside her.

“You’re… Rum?” She seemed surprised, but didn’t shy away from him, reaching up to stroke his face tenderly. “But how- ah!” Her sentence ended in a cry of pain. Instinct suddenly took over, a strange kind of tender instinct that didn’t have any place with the Dark One.

“Shhh,” he lifted her into his arms gently, cradling her against him. “You can talk later. Right now you need help.”

Rumpelstiltskin took her back to the Dark Castle, laid her on his own bed, and tended to her injury. It was more complex than he thought it might be, even a mite magical in nature. There were only a few people who could have done this to her, but first…

First she needed to sleep. The first priority was getting her well. The second was finding out where she had been all these years. Was she wandering the world all alone? Had she found someone, had a family in all this time? 

And the third was finding out why she still looked eighteen.

X

When Belle opened her eyes again, she had no idea where she was. The room was richly decorated in red and gold, and a strange man in a dark red vest sat at the foot of the bed.

Rumpelstiltskin.

Everything rushed back to her in a moment, the chase, the fight in the forest, and her old friend… He looked so strange now. Granted, in her time she had seen much stranger, but she hadn’t expected this. This was the work of dark magic, the kind that the Urdur sisters warned her away from at the very beginning.

She stared at him for a long moment, looking him over, trying to get used to his new form. New hair, new skin, even new eyes… they were blue now, flitting around the room and looking at everything except her. Only when she tried to move, letting out an involuntary cry of pain, did he look her way.

“Don’t move,” he warned. “You’ve been asleep for three days. I did what I could, but... well, there was an unexpected little problem. Dark magic doesn’t like to mix with your kind of magic.”

Belle didn’t dare speak. There were explanations due on both sides.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asked. 

“I'm sorry,” Belle breathed. “I’m so _sorry_. I- I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to…” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“The sisters told me not to-”

“You kept your magic from me all these years because our spinner aunts told you to?” he spoke slowly, as if trying to get through to a particularly slow child.

“Do you realize who they were?” she snapped, her usual temperament taking over. She didn’t care about the scales or the change of voice- he was still Rumpelstiltskin and he still refused to listen to anyone but himself. “We were raised by Fate herself, in all her forms. They taught me how to use my magic, and they told me never to speak of it to you. I didn’t understand then, but… now I see why.” She reached out towards him, almost involuntarily. Magic had obviously done this. His fingers twitched just a little, like he wanted to reach out but didn’t know how. “What’s happened to you, Rum? 

“The Dark One.” He turned away from her, casting his eyes down as if ashamed. A shiver ran down Belle’s spine. She knew of the Dark One- she’d heard of him in her travels, but she tried to keep as far away as she could from black magic. 

“He did this to you?” 

“No,” Rum stood slowly, careful not to look at her. “I _am_ the Dark One.”

The shock hit her like a blow, crushing the air from her lungs. It couldn’t be. The man who murdered countless people without even blinking an eye, the man who made deals that affected their very souls, who cursed and lied and cheated and stole…

It couldn’t be the same as her spinner. No. Please, God, no.

Please.

Belle was almost glad he wasn’t looking at her. Among other things, she spent much of her time in libraries reading over the years they were separated. She knew the traditions surrounding all sorts of magic. She knew what you had to do to become the Dark One, and she didn’t think that Rum could have stomached it.

“Why?” she asked, choking on her own words, the pain from her wound forgotten for the moment. Rumpelstiltskin turned back to her for just a moment.

“A question for a question, dearie.” He raised an eyebrow, obviously waiting on her confirmation.

“Lachesis used to call me that. Dearie,” she sighed. “What’s your question, Rum?”

“What happened to _you_?” he gestured to her bloodied clothing.

“I managed to anger the wrong people. Queen Regina set her wolves on me. I was lucky- I think they smelled you coming and ran for the hills…” She blinked, looking him over once more. “Even the Queen’s dogs don’t like you, and they’re around dark magic all day.”

“Why were they-”

“Ah, ah,” Belle tutted.“My turn. _Why_?”

“Does it really matter?!”

“Yes, it do-” she cut herself off with a wince. Apparently even trying to move wasn’t going to happen for a long while yet. “Please, Rum. I’m your friend.” Rumpelstiltskin looked at her sadly without responding, and walked towards the door.

“You need to sleep.”

The door shut behind him, and Belle sighed. There were rocks in her throat, and tears slowly leaked from the corners of her eyes. After all this time, she thought she’d healed. She thought she wouldn’t ever go back to the way things were, and yet…

It was impossible. After so long, she thought her feelings would have faded, but now she wasn’t sure if they ever would. She would die in a thousand years and still love him, and in a way she felt pathetic.

In another way she felt utterly elated.

Belle knew about many things, some from first-hand experience and some from reading about them. She almost didn’t dare hope that… In her life she had only ever seen one instance of it- a farmer and his wife, living a humble but happy life on the far edge of the town. 

True Love.

True Love never dies, never fades, and it is unique and special to those two people. Could you have more than one True Love? The general consensus was no, but no one knew for sure. Before she left, Belle was torn between trying to brush off her feelings as a hopeless infatuation and hoping that something stronger might come out of all her waiting, but now…

After years apart, even with scales and a reputation fearsome enough to make any man run for the hills, she still loved him. Could it be True Love? The answer was nothing more and nothing less than “possibly.”

There was no way to excuse everything he had done, not by a long shot, but they would need to talk about that, just between the two of them. He’d saved her life. Didn’t that count for some kind of humanity left in him, some sort of reason? And besides… it was never really about excuses, was it?  
There were so many questions left to ask, but Belle felt the dizzying fog of magic around her, urging her into sleep, and at the moment she didn’t care to fight it.

X

The next time she awoke, Rumpelstiltskin was nowhere to be seen. 

Belle slowly shifted to one side, and then to the other, testing out her injuries. The dogs hadn’t been as much of a problem as the arrows. Three archers accompanied the pack, and one of them had managed to get a solid hit on her left side. She gingerly moved an arm to ghost over her wound. It was sore, but nothing like the pain from before. If she was careful, she could walk.

Very slowly, Belle sat up on the bed, taking in the room properly. The floor was wood with rugs covering the majority, and a fire roared in the large fireplace. It looked like a room fit for a king or a lord, not for a traveling peasant with a little magic under her fingertips. 

Belle slid off the high bed, wincing as her feet hit the floor. Even with Rum’s magic, it would take time for her to heal completely. He could have fixed it in a moment if it weren’t for her own powers getting in the way, and Belle refused to heal herself. She maintained that there were some things that could be accomplished by magic, some things that shouldn’t be accomplished by magic, and some things that the body and the mind could use a little help with sometimes.

Her body could certainly use the help, but she wasn’t about to let magic knit up her bones again. Everything came with a price, and she didn’t want to find out what the price might be for something as large as this.

There was a washbasin on the dresser, in front of a large, covered mirror. A simple dress and clean bandages lay beside it. Rumpelstiltskin’s magic had obviously kept away the infection and rot while she slept, but now it was time to do something medically proper about the mess that washer side.  
Looking down, Belle realized the state of her own dirty and blood-soaked clothing with a sigh. She unlaced her dress slowly, using the water to loosen the matted blood and ease the fabric away from her skin without opening the wound again. It would be good to have a proper bath at some point, but as of now there was neither tub nor time for such luxuries.

Sodden clothing discarded on the floor, she cleaned the wound from the same water (which never seemed to become bloody, no matter how many times she dipped the cloth in) and covered it with bandages wrapped around her torso and a little of her own magic for safekeeping. She’d work on making a salve later, but it would do for now.

Small magic. That was the way healers worked. 

Not to say that she couldn’t use big magic, if she wanted to, but small magic had small prices, and the wisest of sorcerers knows that a little goes a long way if you use it well. Belle had all the capabilities of someone as powerful as Maleficent or Regina… she simply chose not to use it. 

Well, not often. That was another story entirely, and the reason she’d been in such a pickle in the first place.

Belle slipped on a cream-colored chemise and stepped into the simple red dress, lacing it up the front slowly. She would never guess how Rum had known what might fit her, but magic could do much. Her old shoes had disappeared, so she walked out of the room in bare feet, steeling herself for whatever might be outside the door.

The only thing that met her was stairs. 

A long, winding stone staircase stretched from the door of the room and didn’t seem to stop for miles. There were no windows, no evidence of what might be outside these walls, and the only light came from torches in sconces placed periodically down the stairwell.

She didn’t know how far she’d walked before she found the bottom, but when she did the shock finally hit her.

It was a castle.

And not just a tiny castle, oh no. This was a proper castle, with corridors and turrets and a large entryway with doors three times as tall as she was. The tower let out onto a balcony overlooking the entryway with a steep staircase going down. She put one foot on the first step to descend when there was a cloud of purple smoke, and Rumpelstiltskin appeared out of thin air.

“What are you doing up?” he asked, slipping an arm about her waist in an attempt to lead her back up to the tower. “You should be asleep.”

“Is this the Dark Castle?” Belle asked, ignoring his question completely. She’d heard tales of the Dark Castle in her travels- rumors of what monsters it contained- but she never thought she would see her childhood friend as its inhabitant.

“Yes,” he said softly. “Are you surprised?”

Was she? Most of the initial shock had worn off by now, but she was in no way prepared for any of this. Perhaps she was so surprised that she couldn’t be surprised any longer.

“I don’t know.”

“You should really go back and rest,” he began, but Belle wouldn’t hear of it.

“I don’t need rest, Rum. I need answers.” She looked over at him deliberately, hoping he was still as susceptible to honest eye contact as he used to be. “Please.”

“Alright,” he sighed. He never _had_ learned how to say no to her.

X

He brought her down to the dining room, seated across from each other at the large table, to answer whatever questions she had. 

Belle picked at her food as he discreetly worked a little more of his healing magic into the gash at her side. These things had to be taken slowly, urged along little by little.

“Stop that,” she said suddenly, sitting up a little straighter.

“Stop what, dearie?” He sat back in his chair, feigning innocence.

“Well, for one thing you can stop trying to look innocent, and for another you can stop calling me ‘dearie.’” She laid down her fork and mimicked his position. “But I meant for you to stop probing me with your magic. I can heal on my own, Rum.”

He didn’t like seeing her in pain, but he nodded his consent to her wishes.

“Now… what happened? What made you… _this_?” She waved her hand, unable to come up with an accurate description. Even now, with strange scaled skin and too-large eyes, black nails and a checkered past… she didn’t look at him with disgust. She looked at him like she had back in their village days, like she still cared about him.

“They were going to take Bae away from me,” he said, standing. He didn’t know where he was going, but he just wanted to get away from her eyes.

“So you ran, I remember.” The scraping behind him indicated that she slid back from the table, and was probably standing as well. “But why the Dark One? Were you so desperate that magic was the only way out?”

“Yes.” Rumpelstiltskin sighed and walked towards the corner where a spinning wheel sat, surrounded by straw. He sat quietly, rubbing a little straw between his fingers, before starting to spin.

“Rum,” Belle whispered, suddenly closer than he thought she was. “Did no one ever tell you?”

“Tell me… what, exactly?” He spun around so he was face to face will Belle, who was standing behind the spinning wheel, looking shocked.

“Magic cannot be stolen, not by any means. You have to possess it to use it, even in very small amounts. Over time it can… _mature_ … but you can never use magic at all if you weren’t predisposed to it.”

“I don’t understand.” Either that, or he had made a number of sacrifices and lost so much… all for nothing… and he wasn’t ready to face that possibility.

“Did you ever wonder why children came and went from our aunts’ home? Didn’t it ever cross your mind that we were the only ones-”

“What on _earth_ are you talking about?!” Belle flinched slightly, and Rumpelstiltskin was suddenly aware that he’d been yelling. 

“You never needed the Dark One,” she said slowly, refusing to let him get the better of her. “You had magic with you all this time.”

And with that, Belle walked back upstairs to sleep.

X

In the days that followed, Belle took up a kind of semi-permanent residence in the Dark Castle. Her wound healed, very slowly, but between the tiny bits of magic that Rumpelstiltskin used to keep away infection and speed the recovery just a hair, she was back on her feet like she’d never been hurt in two weeks. 

She picked a room to call her own, a cozy little hideaway in one of the corners of the castle that overlooked the rose garden. She cooked sometimes, cleaned other days, but only when she didn’t have other things to do. Magic was her trade, and she put Rumpelstiltskin’s vast library to use right away, hunting down rare books and spending hours upon hours reading.

Neither of them ever mentioned her leaving.

Neither of them made any indication that she should stay. 

Every now and then someone or another would come by seeking a deal. Sometimes Belle helped with deals, and sometimes she simply observed. Once or twice there was an instance that Belle’s services were needed as a healer rather than Rumpelstiltskin’s magic. A father looking for a cure for his daughter’s illness, a woman who accidentally swallowed something enchanted… She was generally gentler than Rum, and she demanded less of a price for her services.  
In fact, she truly demanded no price at all.

Sometimes Rumpelstiltskin had trouble fathoming it.

Eventually, the time came when Rum needed to go out on business- travel to the next few kingdoms over, a little place by the sea that he was meeting an informant. He refused to talk about why, almost as vehemently as he refused to talk about Bae. Belle had asked once or twice where the boy was, but each time a strange, far-off look came over him and he changed the subject. He simply said that Bae was gone.

Belle worried for the boy, but couldn’t get any more from his father.

In the hopes of finding a little more information, she decided to come along on the trip, and was now waiting patiently inside a small tavern while Rumpelstiltskin conducted his business outside. Or rather… she was meant to be waiting.

In reality, she witnessed one of the most terrifying scenes of her life.

There was clanging on the streets- clashing metal, a duel perhaps. Belle ran out to investigate, sticking to the shadows for safety. No one would be able to spot her in the alleys and nooks along the streets, not if she was careful.

She hadn’t planned on coming along Rumpelstiltskin, a pirate attempting to fight him, and a woman that the Dark One had pinned against the wall with one hand on her throat. The other was poised to rip her heart from her chest.

“Why were you so miserable?” he asked, anger and indignation dripping from every word.

“Because I _never_ loved you.”

Belle shifted her view automatically, trying to get a better view of the woman’s face. She was defiant- unafraid of even the Dark One. And… she sounded familiar… but it couldn’t be. As Belle slowly stepped from the shadows, careful to stay out of view of the pirate struggling to his feet, she realized exactly who was about to feel Rumpelstiltskin’s hand on their heart.

It was Milah.

X

He hadn’t meant to find them, truly he hadn’t.

The pirate had simply come upon him, and Rumpelstiltskin had taken his chance while he had it. He hadn’t planned on _her_ showing up.  
It would have been fine if she didn’t try to deal with him. Truthfully, dealing would have been fine, but she went so far as to try to _justify_ her actions. He demanded an explanation, and rather than simply saying she was wrong (which she did), she tried to justify it. If there was one person in the world that he never wanted to see again, it was his ex-wife.

When he married Milah, he had honestly been in love with her. He didn’t think that anyone else could ever love him the way she did, but the birth of his son had been met with… mixed emotions on both sides. 

The day that he came back from war was the day that shattered his relationship with Milah. She couldn’t look at him without disgust and shame, and it pained him to see the woman who had once whispered “I love you” turn away from him so easily. Perhaps it wasn’t true love, he’d thought, but then he would wonder why he married her in the first place, so Rumpelstiltskin held onto the tiny pocket of hope that somewhere deep down she might still love him. His hopes were dashed when she… _ran away_ … with the pirate, and someday he could forgive her for that. He would heal as he always did, and even if there _were_ scars, what then? It was only one more among thousands.

But he would never forgive her for abandoning Baelfire.

Rumpelstiltskin had been abandoned as a child, and he had always assumed the same of Belle. He had never planned on leaving his son the way that his father left him, and the very thought was like the Dark One’s dagger in his heart… but after Milah left things had been different. He’d changed.  
Before he truly thought about what he was doing, Milah was in danger of losing her heart. That was a fitting punishment for someone who had caused to much pain to his own heart, wasn’t it? To Bae’s heart?

Now… just squeeze and-

“ _Stop_!” Belle’s voice came from somewhere in the darkness, and the sound of footsteps followed. She was crouching beside him in a matter of seconds. “Rum, please. No. You can’t kill her-”

“Why not?!” he shouted, anguish closing his throat. “Why does she deserve any less?”

“I know you think-”

“It’s not _about_ what I think!” Rumpelstiltskin paused with his hand over Milah’s heart, not yet in her chest. Hook tried to rush to her aid, but he threw the pirate back with a flick of his fingers, hit by an invisible force and colliding with the wall. “She abandoned Baelfire. She left him alone without an explanation, thinking that his mother was dead or- or _worse_! I can’t excuse what she did, Belle- you have to see that!” His eyes never once left Milah’s face, and she never made a move to deny any of his accusations.

“It’s not about excusing what she did!” Belle shouted, grabbing his shoulder with both her hands, like she was trying to shake some sense into him. “All that time ago, when you came back from the Ogre Wars injured- do you remember what I told you?”

At that, Rumpelstiltskin finally turned and looked at her, because he _did_ remember.

“Love isn’t about excuses; it’s about forgiveness!” Her eyes were pleading, begging him to stop, to walk away, but the Dark One was too strong. Rumpelstiltskin plunged his hand into Milah’s chest, and she gasped in shock and pain.

“She never loved me, nor could she forgive-”

“You’re not Milah!” Belle pounded his arm with her small hands even as his black claws closed around Milah’s heart. “You’re _better_ than this. Be better than this.”

“I have killed so many. What is one more life among _thousands_?” he growled, and somehow he knew it was the power talking for him… yet he couldn’t stop. He didn’t have the will to stop.

Some part of him, however small, wanted Milah to die, and that was all that mattered.

“It’s a _life_! It’s a life with a love and a journey, and you might think everything in the world has a price on it, but a life does _not_. You can’t do this.” 

He paused, just for a moment, trying to believe what Belle said. _Wanting_ to believe what Belle said. At one time, yes, he might have been better… but not anymore.

Just grip a little tighter…

“Rum, please. Listen to me.” Belle was frantic. “I know the ways of magic. Every moment of your life is a dance between controlling the power and letting the power control you, but you can’t let it win.”

It was like a battle raging inside his mind. The Dark One, the raw _power_ , was at one end, screaming for him to rip out her heart and crush it to dust. At the other end was Belle- warmth and forgiveness… and the only person who had ever truly cared about him.

“You have to fight this. You’re stronger than you think you are- I _know_ it,” Belle continued, pounding her point into his mind with all the strength she had left, voice choked over. “You are _not_ the Dark One- you are _Rumpelstiltskin_. You’re caring and kind and gentle and _I love you_!”

Even if he hadn’t been on the brink of convinced, Rumpelstiltskin would have dropped his hand from Milah’s chest out of sheer shock. He let her go, even though she was obviously still afraid to move, and turned to Belle.

There were tears streaming down her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks were flushed, hands fisted in his shirt. He couldn’t have denied her anything, Dark One or no.

_Love isn’t about excuses; it’s about forgiveness._

Belle had forgiven him every single wrongdoing he’d ever committed. She called him her friend- nay, her love- even when faced with this aspect of him. He had lied, cheated, stolen, and murdered, and still she loved him. She was the one person who could still evoke even a scrap of real emotion and sentiment in him.

But was it true? She could be desperate to make him stop. She could be out to get something. She could simply want to save the life of a woman who had once been her friend... 

“Go,” he whispered, glancing back at Milah for only a fleeting moment. She took the chance to scamper away to the unconscious pirate in the alley as Rumpelstiltskin continued to stare at Belle.

What was going on with him? He was Rumpelstiltskin- the Spinner, the Dark One, feared and hated by everyone for his magic and his cowardice… though he imagined that most people still alive did not remember the latter. And now Belle, his almost-sister, the woman he thought for a long time… Well, that didn’t matter any longer, did it?

She could change him, make him question everything he had ever done.

The point was that after all those years, she was back, and she changed him as she always had. She brought out the best in him.

He had always tried to be better for Belle. That was the reason he never complained and always worked as hard as he could, that was the reason he never fought back even when he became strong enough to. She was so small and so brave, and from the day he met her he wanted to be better. At first it was something for himself, and then one day… one day he had looked up from spinning and realized that Belle was not a child any longer.

She was a woman, and it was time for her to be courted and marry, and that fact made him strangely… jealous. He didn’t want to share her brilliance or her beauty, or even her bravery with anyone, and he hadn’t realized why until it was far too late.

When Belle stepped up to the role as Bae’s almost-mother, never raised her voice at either of them, and never said a single unkind word about his injury. Never once had she called him a coward. Never once did she look at him with anything less than kind affection.

Never once did he understand why.

Not until now.

“I’m sorry,” Belle suddenly said, standing and running off in the direction that led back towards the portal home.

She’d been in love with him. Actually, truly in love. _How_ was beyond him, but that didn't matter in the grand scheme, now did it?

All those years, he wondered why she would even bother with staying with him- some sort of sisterly affection, he’d assumed, but no. All that time, raising Bae and dealing with Milah… Milah. Oh, god. How long had she loved him? When did it start? Was it even through their courtship? And if so… why didn’t she ever _say_? 

And how long had Rumpelstiltskin returned her love? He had always loved Belle, but not… not like _this_ … or had he? It was difficult to say. Milah had always been uneasy with Belle around in the house, and he had constantly wondered why she found Belle’s presence a threat…

Now he knew. 

How could he be so blind? Yes, Rumpelstiltskin had loved Milah, but not in the same way he loved Belle. He loved Milah with a passion, like a candle or a fire, and for a short, sweet time she had returned that love, but it burned so fiercely that it burned itself out, decaying into gray ashes before their very eyes.

With Belle, everything happened slowly. It had all been building from childhood, and finally culminated on this day.

But would it ever change anything between them?

After all… monsters are not meant to love.

X

Rumpelstiltskin hadn’t heard from Belle in a week when he finally saw her again, outside in the rose garden at sunset.

“Hello.” She didn’t turn away from the brilliant display in the sky as she spoke.

“Hello.”

“You know… you didn’t need the Dark One’s magic,” she said, so casually that she might have been commenting on the weather.

“You don’t understand-” Rumpelstiltskin began, but it seemed that Belle wasn’t done, finally turning to look at him.

“Please. Let me say my piece,” she waited until he nodded his confirmation. “I’ve been thinking so much about what happened… _there_.”

“Yes,” Rumpelstiltskin whispered, trying to fill the silence where her voice should be, where a laugh or a smile should be, the space that all that pain occupied…

“I’ve known you for so long, and you have so much inside you that you never knew… You _never_ needed magic- but you let it consume you, and now… well, just _look_!” Belle seemed utterly lost for words, gesturing to Rumpelstilskin with both hands.

“At what, dearie?”

“Exactly!” Belle cried, exasperated. “You’re not the person I knew anymore! My Rum would never even raise his voice, much less murder anyone, he wouldn’t constantly expect everyone else on earth to be out to get him, and he would never, _ever_ call me _dearie_!” 

She stared right into his eyes, holding his gaze until he fought not to squirm.

“Perhaps you simply never saw it before,” he said with a shrug, trying to play it off. Belle visibly choked, shaking her head. 

“No. I’ve known you for most of your life, and you’re…” She seemed unwilling to say her next words, defeated and disappointed. “You’re not the man I fell in love with.”

She took a deep breath and nodded.

“But that was a very long time ago. Things have changed…” Her eyes slowly traveled upward to meet his, judging his reaction before she spoke. “I… think it’s best I get some rest. Goodnight.” She turned to walk back up to her room, but Rumpelstiltskin managed to gather enough of his wit to try and stop her.

“Belle-”

“ _Goodnight_ , Rumpelstiltskin.” The cold steel in his voice stopped him in his tracks, and he simply watched as she walked out of the room.

His full name sounded oddly strange on her tongue, so foreign and out of place. To everyone else he was always “Rumpelstiltskin” or sometimes “Rumple,” but Belle was the only one who had ever called him “Rum.” It wasn’t that she couldn’t pronounce his full name, but as a child she found it a nuisance to say over and over when she needed to run around the village looking for him. Not once since the day they met had she ever called him Rumpelstiltskin.

It was like Belle had completely ostracized him. Oh, she would be polite and grateful, and she would still interact with him, but they would no longer have the warm, easy feel that they used to. That much was certain, if for no other reason than the love she used to harbor as a child…

Yes, she had said “goodnight,” but she didn’t mean that.

She meant goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I altered the time frame for killing (or in this case almost killing) Milah just a little to suit my purposes.  
> Also, five years is just as logical a time frame as I could come up with for time between Bae's departure from Fairy Tale world and Milah's death.


	3. The Inevitable

Belle made her way up to her rooms in a huff, forcing herself to remain calm.

Rumpelstiltskin could read her well enough- he’d always been able to read her, even as a child. It could be that she simply never bothered to hide her emotions from him, but she liked to think it was because they were suited for one another. They complimented each other, made up for each other’s weaknesses…

Or at least that was what she used to think.

In a way, she wanted to believe it still, even though the Dark One’s magic seemed to have erased all traces of her beloved spinner. He used to be so kind and gentle by nature, not murderous or conniving.

Why wouldn’t he tell her what happened to Bae? Was he trying to protect her from something? Was he trying to protect himself? Whatever it was, something terrible must have happened if it was enough to drive that boy away from the father he adored, Dark One or no…

A shiver ran down Belle’s spine.

She had to leave. She had to leave now if she didn’t want to become ensnared by the ties binding her to Rum. He wasn’t the same man any longer- he wasn’t the spinner she grew up with, whose child she helped to raise. It would be so hard to leave him, but the longer she stayed the more painful it would become.

If he couldn’t tell her the truth, if he would treat her coldly, treat her like a stranger the whole time she was here… Belle firmly believed that she could help him. Well, she believed that she could try, but without cooperation on Rumpelstiltskin’s part… was there even a point in trying?

She sank down on the edge of the bed with a sigh, covering her face with her hands.

Yes.

Yes, there always was a point in trying. Why? Because she loved him, and there was nothing anyone could do or say to change that. There was no power that could make her forget that, and no reason that she would want to. One thing she had learned from her magical studies was that opposites are important. Lachesis had sat down with her in the kitchens one day, and given her a lemon and a spoonful of brown sugar. She had tried both.

Without the sour lemon, you wouldn’t know how truly sweet the sugar is, she said, and the opposite is true. Without death, there would not be room for new life. Without despair, how would you know the true potency of joy? Without heartache, there wouldn’t be love. Without light we would never know of the darkness, because to us the darkness would be inevitable and unchanging, and there would be no reason to name or identify it.

These things balance the world.

And love makes it turn.

Love spins the thread of life, twists it in knots and brings it around full circle until the day when it is finally cut. Love gives purpose, gives meaning, gives joy and sorrow and laughter and tears until all you feel is a rush of emotions around you and you know, for once in your life, that you are worth more than you think.

Belle stopped packing, lay down on the bed, and wrapped herself in a blanket before falling into a deep sleep.

She would not leave. Not today.

Not until he told her to.

 

X

 

She sat in the rose gardens every night after that, hoping that Rumpelstiltskin would come to her. She wouldn’t seek him out- not now, not when it would frighten him away. It took only three days for him to find her again, and not with a little surprise.

“Why are you still here?”

“You should know that,” Belle murmured, fingering a rose bloom delicately.

“What do you want?” he asked again, searching her eyes. Clearly it was going to be up to her to initiate this conversation.

“All I want is for you to tell me the truth.” Belle said firmly, voice echoing around the quiet gardens. “I want to know where Bae is. I want to know what could make you so angry that you would try to kill a woman you loved. I… I want to know what happened to the man who used to take spiders outside because he couldn’t stand to step on them.”

She stepped forward a little, reaching out to find his hand. It felt different than it used to- a little cool and scaled rather than smooth like human skin, but then again, Rum’s hands were always cold. Cold hands, warm heart, Lachesis said…

Maybe she was wrong.

“He’s gone,” Rum said quietly, his words barely audible. “He talked to the Blue Fairy, less than a year after I last saw you, looking for a way to free me from my curse. She told him there wasn’t one- that we would have to go to a land without magic.”

“Did you try?” She bit back any other questions. Best take this slowly, one small step at a time. It would be hard for both of them. Rumpelstiltskin nodded, lips pressed tightly together.

“She gave him a magic bean. The _last_ magic bean... He planted it, and it opened a portal.” He swallowed hard. The story seemed to be taking its toll on him, regardless of the time that had passed. Had he ever even told anyone else? “Bae went through, and I… I was too much a coward to follow.”

“So where…?” Belle trailed off, leaving the question unspoken, but Rum knew what she meant.

“I don’t know. I’ve been searching for a way to follow him ever since.” The world seemed to tilt around them. Belle couldn’t believe that anything would ever happen to that wonderful dark-haired little boy. He was so brave, so hopeful, and she had even started to think of him as her own around the time that she left…

“So you took on magic to save your son-”

“And it took him as its price,” he finished, scoffing bitterly.

“I’m sorry.” There wasn’t really anything else she could say. Was she angry? Yes. More so than if both of them had left her behind for this new world? A part of her said no, but she knew that deep down she would want both of them to be alive, well, and happy before she would wish this on the man she once loved. Still loved.

Would likely never stop loving.

“Let me help you, Rum.” Belle was sure that she looked about to cry at any moment, but that was alright. If they could heal- get past all the loss and hurt and anger- there was every chance that Rum would have his son and his redemption. It was so much to hope for.

But in a way, it was also very, very pointless.

“Let me get rid of this curse. It’s twisting you, it’s making you into something dark and inhuman and… it’s not _you_ anymore. Please.” The words “ _I love you_ ” hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she bit them back. Rum seemed to consider it for a moment, but

“No one can help me, Belle. I’m far too gone. I’m a monster.” The last sentence was softer than the rest, as if admitting a shameful truth. It wasn’t true, though. It couldn’t be true- there was still good left in him. There had to be. He saved her life.

Wait.

He saved her life. By the old laws she owed him a debt, and the old laws were best obeyed. If only she could convince him to choose her help as a boon, help getting rid of the evil that had rooted itself deep in his soul…

“Rum-”

“No. If you want to help me, then you’ll look for a way to get my boy back to me. You don’t need to be here, Belle. It’s dangerous.”

“I’ve been in danger before. You saved my life; I owe you a debt. Let me repay it.”

“Then help me find my son,” he reached forward suddenly and grasped her hands with both of his, pleading with her. “If you want to help me, then find Bae. You know that you want him back as much as I do, and I can’t… I can’t ever feel rid of my curse until I’ve redeemed myself for what it did to him. Please.”

Honesty. That was what she wanted all along. Belle could see the desperation in his eyes, hear every ounce of it in his voice. She wasn’t sure before how responsible he felt for losing Bae, but now she knew. And in a way, it was true.

He called himself a monster. It was likely that the day he lost his son was the day he started thinking of himself as one.

Belle nodded sadly, choking off the tears welling up in her throat.

“I’ll have to leave you,” she whispered. “I’ll have to go away if you want my help- I know people that might be able to give me ideas, but…” Belle stopped. She simply couldn’t finish her sentence.

Rumpelstiltskin closed his eyes, as if steeling himself for a great impact, but did not drop her hands.

“Will you come back?”

Belle hesitated. She knew what the answer would be if it was up to her, but the truth of it was that it wouldn’t always be up to her. She could die or be captured, and there wouldn’t ever be a way to come back to him again.

“Do you want the honest answer?”

“Yes.”

“I will do everything in my power to come back to you.” And that was the best truth that she could give him. Rumpelstiltskin seemed shocked, one of his hands drifting to brush a strand of hair from her face. His fingers brushed through her long, dark hair slowly, like a careful caress.

“Why?” The question was so soft that she almost didn’t hear it.

“Because,” Belle said quietly, reaching up to cover his hand with hers, “when you find something worth fighting for, you never give up.”

Rumpelstiltskin was silent, mouth opening slightly, like he had every intention of speaking but couldn’t find the right words. Belle reached forward and hugged him tightly, sparing him from having to voice anything. He wrapped his arms around her, gently at first, and then a little tighter, a little more fiercely.

Belle rested her head on his chest, breathing in the strange scent of mingled straw and leather and magic for a long moment. His vest was unlaced at the top, baring his scaled skin to just a little below the collarbone. On impulse, she shifted just a little and placed a soft kiss at the hollow of his throat. He stiffened in surprise, and she pulled away.

“I’ll be gone in the morning,” she said. “Goodbye, Rum.”

“Take care of yourself,” he called hesitantly. “I want my Belle back in one piece.”

It was the closest thing to affection she’d heard since she came to the Dark Castle.

His Belle.

His.

 

X

 

True to her word, after she turned and left Rumpelstiltskin standing in the rose garden, Belle was gone the next morning. He half-hoped that she would have stayed. She was always a stubborn little thing, and he hadn’t expected her to give up on him so easily.

But perhaps she wasn’t giving up on him.

She would come back. Belle was nothing if not honorable, and when she gave her word she kept to it. She would be back sometime… eventually. It might be many years, but she would be back.

She might even have Baelfire with her.

Somewhere down in the recesses of what was left of his human soul, Rumpelstiltskin wondered if he should have chosen something less weighty to help her repay her debt. However, he knew the old laws now. Life debts called for weighty satisfaction- preferably a life for a life. The only other way to truly settle them was by the hardest of tasks over the most years, or many, many smaller deeds over time.

And yet… he didn’t want her to leave.

The only things that stopped him from running to her and hauling her back were that he needed to find his son, and that he was the Dark One. There was no future for them together, no matter how much he wanted to imagine it.

She was the light, everything that embodied goodness and hope. She smiled through her tears and walked on through every single trouble that had ever come her way.

He was the darkness, and he didn’t deserve to be touched by even a little of her light. She couldn’t love him. It was impossible. And if he loved her as he thought before, well, surely that was a fluke, a trick of reasoning in the heat of the moment. He couldn’t possibly have anything more than platonic affection with Belle, nothing more than friendly smiles and fleeting happiness.

He ran his fingers over the patch of skin at the hollow of his throat, where Belle’s kiss had touched him. She wouldn’t have been able to see it without looking, but he had felt the shift. He felt the curse shudder and weaken, and for a moment- one fleeting moment- that little patch of skin had turned back into human flesh.

There was only one thing that could do that, and if it was true, it meant that he had just turned his True Love out into the world without so much as a parting glance… but could the Dark One have a True Love? How could someone even bother to _like_ him as he was, much less _love_ him?

Rumpelstiltskin could love, but the Dark One could not.

He had until Belle returned to figure out which one he wanted to be.

 

X

 

For a hundred years Belle walked the paths of her world, one step at a time, seeking out help in the far corners of the earth. She tried to keep away from the rumors of Rumpelstiltskin, for a short time, but found that his infamy was impossible to avoid.

It was imperative to her that she keep moving, no matter what. The world changed around her, but she knew that she shouldn’t return to a town again until at least a generation had passed- long enough for those who saw her to forget. She would be one hundred and twenty-three years old come spring, and she still looked like an eighteen-year-old girl.

She tried to avoid mirrors as much as she could. It was disturbing to see the world living and dying around you while you stood, frozen in time, face unchanging. She had seen countless deaths, countless wars, and countless sorrows, and yet her skin remained sickeningly pale and unlined, her eyes clear and bright, her hair dark and long, and her form youthful and beautiful.

Some days she thought she’d rather be dead.

Belle knew that would be a very difficult task, though. Over the years she’s learned more powerful magics besides natural healing. If she were injured, she could heal it within seconds, not even leaving a scar behind, though she preferred to let wounds heal naturally if she could. Granted, the muscles would be still for several days, but that was the body accommodating to magic and spontaneously having its ligaments regrown. She physically was unable to drown, unable to suffocate, unable to starve, and was immune to several different common poisons. In short, unless she wanted to hire someone to decapitate her, there was very little chance she would die of anything but old age.

And truthfully, even decapitation wasn’t a guarantee…

All of this she’d figured out by accident, mind you, and each time it was her magic that saved her. The more she used it, the more she became in harmony with it. It kept her healthy, kept her strong, and repaired the damage to her body from any of the aforementioned near-deaths. Belle had the advantage that most sorcerers did not- she knew magic, but she also knew science.

Human anatomy was fascinating to her, and she kept a careful check on her body to make sure everything was running properly and would, if anything went drastically wrong, continue to run properly without the help of magic. Thus, the poisons were not only held at bay, and the suffocation not only kept from killing her, but flushed out as if the effects had never happened.

The only thing she hadn’t figured out how to do was stop her monthly blood, nuisance that it was. She could stop the cramps, though, and that would do until she puzzled out the rest.

After all, she came to the conclusion a long time ago that she wouldn’t ever have children.

Over the years she met many people with many solutions to her problem- or rather, many people with solutions to Rumpelstiltskin’s problem, and many more who claimed to have solutions to hers. Most of the solutions to Rumpelstiltskin’s problem involved bloodshed and darkness, and she turned them away immediately. Most of the solutions to her problem involved memory loss of a permanent sort.

It really wasn’t a problem, in all honesty. She didn’t think she screamed out heartache to the world (in fact, she had hoped the journey would rid her of her heartache), but sometimes people would see her in town squares, watching children play or tentative young lovers walking by, and they noticed things.

And then she would think about him, and then she would brush it away.

That was how she met the fairies, actually.

She was sitting on the edge of a fountain, just watching the crowds, and had just wiped away a rare tear when someone laid a hand on her shoulder. It was a woman who looked about the same age that Belle physically looked, maybe a year or two older. Pretty, with sift brown curls and dark, pleading eyes.

 

_“Don’t cry,” she begged. “Please, I see what’s wrong. I feel your sorrow.” The woman sat down beside her at the fountain. Belle was immediately suspicious, but she didn’t seem to be dangerous._

_“You’re so very strong,” she said softly, but then seemed to realize she hadn’t introduced herself. “My name is Nova.”_

_“Belle.” The pair shook hands and turned back to the crowd. “Are you going to tell me he’s not worth crying over, or are you going to offer me a way to forget?” Belle asked. She was used to this routine by now. It was best to ask and get it over with before it started._

_But Nova looked genuinely surprised._

_“Oh, no!”  she said, shaking her head vigorously. It was almost comical. “You should never forget the people you love.”_

_“Then what did you want to talk to me about?” Belle asked, turning towards Nova._

_“I… don’t know, really. I just couldn’t stand to see you crying,” she admitted. “And besides, nothing that anyone but a powerful sorcerer could give you would make you forget.”_

_Belle’s heart dropped into her stomach. She’d heard of plenty of people going to mages and small enchanters for forgetfulness potions, over debts or troubles or unrequited love. Never had she sold them herself, but she knew they were there. And they usually worked… all but in one case._

_True Love. It was the one instance that couldn’t be erased by a forgetfulness potion, at least not one of the normal sort. It took strong dark magic to rid yourself of it, so strong that it had to rid you of all love to wipe that person from your memory._

_Was that really what she had? She didn’t dare hope before, assumed she was being stupid or silly, but after a so many years… that was truly the only viable explanation, wasn’t it?_

_Belle looked up at Nova with wide, fearful blue eyes._

_“You didn’t know?” she asked gently. Belle shook her head._

_“How do you?”_

_Nova looked one way and then the other before leaning down to whisper in Belle’s ear._

_“Fairies have their ways.” She smiled at Belle’s astounded expression. “And besides, True Love is the only thing that would last as long as you have lived. If it were lust, or if it were not an illusion or a misconception, it would have faded away long ago… But more to the point, the Rheul Ghorm sent me to come and find you.”_

 

It was actually where she was headed now, to see Nova.

She first met the fairy twenty years ago, brought to see the Rheul Ghorm, the Blue Fairy. Belle had apparently spread in fame across various lands as a traveling healer, and the fairy was smart enough to figure out Belle wasn’t aging. She wound up making a deal with the fairies, procuring their help in making sure that she wouldn’t be traced wherever she traveled to.

A little questioning had followed, but ever since Belle mentioned that she had been raised under the care of the Urdur sisters, none of the higher powers had dared speak to her, much less try to harm her. She had learned very quickly that everyone fears the hand of fate and the thread of life, even those destined to live a very long life.

Especially those destined to love a very long life.

She had kept up communication with Nova, after spilling out her story to the young fairy, and had found a wonderful friend over these past twenty years. Nova helped to gather information about people and places, and ways to travel to other worlds. They’d done some investigating into the missing magic beans, and Belle herself had gone to the palace to inquire about them.

She hadn’t been impressed with the prince’s response. The stupid boy (and she _could_ call him a boy, now, she realized) was a womanizer who shirked his responsibilities and his honor in favor of pleasure and gold. The beans, it seemed, were out of the question.

However, there was one thing that was not out of the question, and she was ready to try it tonight. It was desperate, and rash, and probably downright stupid, but Nova had agreed to go through it with her, and that was enough.

She was going to call her spinner aunts. Tonight.

Through her magical studies she learned the “proper” way to call up the old powers, but Belle knew that the Urdur sisters would come only grudgingly to that call. They didn’t take to bones and blood. They liked fresh food, and fragrant smoke, and a very polite request along the lines of “I’m in desperate need of help, so would you please kindly come and help me please?”

Belle had a written note in her pocket to send to them, along with a few treats in a wicker basket. She remembered from her childhood which foods they liked best, and had them ready at hand for when they showed up. She hadn’t planned to meet Nova in the clearing for another hour, but that gave her time to make the necessary preparations before the fairy came.

However, when she made it to the clearing in the forest, she nearly dropped her basket in surprise.

A fire already roared in the center, surrounded by stones in a neat pit. There were long logs around it, spaced like benches, and seated on the logs were three women. One was young, with golden hair spilling down her back in curls. Another was a matron, and Belle knew without needing to look that she was missing a tooth. The third was old, silvery hair wound around her head in braids like a crown, hunched over and staring directly into the flames. One would think it might hurt her eyes, but it was no matter. She couldn’t see.

The Urdur sisters themselves had beat her to the clearing.

“I hear your footsteps. Come over here, child. Sit by the fire,” Atropos called, waving. Belle walked over slowly and sat beside the woman who cut the thread of life with just the tiniest amount of fear. A long while passed without speaking, the crackling of the fire the only noise to keep them company.

“Well, aren’t you going to give your old aunties a kiss?” Atropos asked, cracking a teasing smile. Belle immediately relaxed, kissed her on the cheek with a laugh, and did the same to Lachesis and Clotho. She brought out the food from her basket- blackberry tarts for Clotho; bread, cheese, and dried meat for Lachesis; and a flask full of sweet wine for Atropos. They smiled at her gifts, but insisted it was unnecessary.

“You are our daughter, sweetheart,” Lachesis said, breaking off a piece of the loaf and handing it to Belle. “If you need us we will come. Intent is everything to the old magics.”

“I thought every human only had three questions to ask you,” Belle said carefully. She wasn’t about to waste one of her questions if it was true.

“Oh, and just as clever as ever, I see,” Clotho said through a mouthful of tart. She swallowed quickly, and her next words were more clear. “I think it’s very safe to establish that you are no longer human, duckie. You’ve been exposed to magic for far too long. It’s a part of you, and though you may have a human soul, your body and your mind are far beyond what humans might ever be.”

“Let me amend my statement,” Belle said, carefully taking a bite of bread and swallowing before speaking. “I was under the impression that the same rules that apply to humans also applied to me.”

“They do, in a way.” Lachesis smiled. “You get three questions… per visit. Each human is granted one visit with us during their lifetime, should they ever wish to use it, but those of us on the more… _immortal_ … plane prefer to converse more frequently.”

“And before you waste one of your questions asking,” Atropos said, smacking her lips, “You can call on us once every month, from full moon to new moon. This does not mean a month must pass between your call, but that you can only call once each moon cycle. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Belle nodded for the sake of her other two aunts, having learned at a young age to always voice her answers for the oldest’s sake… even if Atropos did have an uncanny way of knowing her response.

“We only tell you this because we love you, you know.” Clotho stood to move a little closer to the fire as she spoke. “We’ve been watching you, and Rumple, too, and we don’t want you to mess this up.”

“Now is an important time.” Belle was careful to keep the question out of her voice.

“Yes,” Lachesis agreed. “Now is a very important time. The world will soon be changing, and there are certain things that you need to know to prepare for this change.” The matron raised an eyebrow, and Belle took her chance.

“What… what knowledge will be useful when the world changes?”

“Very good,” Atropos nodded. Belle’s phrasing permitted them to tell her more than what was strictly necessary. Even the fates were bound by laws, and bound by questions. “You will be transported to a new land by a vile, dark magic, requiring sacrifice of the worst kind. The new land will be devoid of all magic. Your memories will be stolen from you- all of them, for a short time. You should also know that the one who cast the curse did not create the curse.” She turned her sightless eyes towards Clotho, who picked up the answer.

“You should know that there will be only one who remembers until the savior comes. The little swan girl. Then there will be two, and one of the two will return your memories to you.” Clotho quirked an eyebrow at Lachesis.

“True Love’s kiss can break any curse. You would do well to remember that. Also… if I were you, I’d stay away from the apples.”

Clotho rolled her eyes at the last comment, and Atropos chuckled, but Belle was simply confused.

“If you’ve been watching me, then you know I came to seek help in finding Rumpelstiltskin’s son.”

“Sometimes the answers we seek are not the answers we need,” Atropos shrugged. “You still have two questions left if you’re curious, but you won’t find him in this world.” A light went on in Belle’s head. She thought she understood now.

“That’s why you told me about the curse that will take us to a new world. Rumpelstiltskin’s son is there.” A slow smile spread across her face. She was nothing if not loved by her aunts, so much that they dared to help her slide around the old rules.

“He is.” Clotho nodded, pleased. “But it will take you a long while yet to find him.” Clearly, this leg of the conversation was finished with that statement. She still had two questions left, but truthfully… Belle wasn’t sure what to ask.

“What troubles you, child?” Lachesis asked. “I can tell there is something wrong.”

“You know very well what is wrong, Allotter,” Atropos snapped. “I can feel her heartache in my bones.”

“Will I ever be able to help him?” Belle asked. It was a question worth knowing the answer to, and apparently her aunts agreed.

“In three hundred years you will see him again, one last time, before the curse settles in and everything turns to ashes. Your heart will break, and you will run away from him, and that is the natural way of things.” Clotho stuck a blackberry-covered finger in her mouth and sucked away the juice. Lachesis took her turn to speak.

“He will see you before you run, and he will do his utmost to catch you. The next time he sees you after that day it will be in the other world-”

“And,” Atropos interrupted, “He will be the one to restore your memories to you. It will be a long, hard road, but the ultimate answer is yes.”

“Anything else?” Clotho asked. They were clearly waiting on her to ask something, but she couldn’t pick up on what they wanted, and the three could only give her so many clues.

“I would like to save my last question… if that’s possible, that is,” Belle said decisively.

“It is,” Lachesis nodded sagely. “A very wise decision, if you ask me. That’s a little magic that can’t be taken away from you.” All three of the sisters smirked mischievously.

“I suggest, little one, that you walk away from this place. Follow the path straight out of the forest and meet your fairy friend on the edge of town. Continue your studies. Stay hidden for a while. Perhaps seek out Maleficent, the Dragoness, in another two centuries or so. She may be able to offer you shelter from those who would seek to harm you.” Atropos drained the last of her wine from the flask, and put the container back in Belle’s basket.

“You name should be enough to give you protection in from many, but there are still those foolish enough to seek you out for their own purposes.” Clotho tucked the last blackberry tart in her pocket, patting it softly. “Continue your studies. Build up your power. Use the light and the good inside you to make you stronger.”

“And whatever you do, be brave,” Lachesis said softly. She reached out to stroke Belle’s hair tenderly, as a mother would. “You are the closest thing we have ever had to a daughter, sweetheart. We want the best for you, but you have to stay strong.”

“I will.” Belle nodded.

Sensing an end to their conversation, she stood slowly, picked up her basket, and turned away from the fire. She wasn’t surprised to find a cobblestone path leading her out of the forest that most definitely had not been there before. They would always take care of her, those strange, loving aunts. Three a century was like a moment for them, a blink of an eye. No wonder they had seen fit to warn her so early on about the curse. They had never known what it was like to sense the passing of time as a human did, so they couldn’t fathom the amount of time between now and then as anything less than a breath or a whisper on the wind.

Belle took the first step forward and walked out of the forest, back towards Nova and the town, and three hundred years of studies and waiting, and perhaps looking for someone named Maleficent…?

She knew better than to look back.

 

X

 

Three hundred years and one day passed.

She found Rumpelstiltskin somewhere that she never expected him to be. Well, two places at once, actually.

The first place was in the gardens at the royal palace in the southern lands. They didn’t keep roses there- apparently the new princess didn’t like the thorns. Belle had never understood that. Roses were always her favorite, and the thorns were only there because they were protecting themselves. If you took the time to take them off one by one, then there was no harm and much more reward to the beautiful bloom.

The second place was in the arms of Princess Cora.

Snogging her senseless.

She let out a gasp involuntarily and they immediately broke apart, turning in her direction. Belle backed away slowly, slapping her hand over her mouth to try to keep back the words pounding against her lips. _Liar, traitor, I thought you loved me_.

But that was only partly true. She knew that according to Nova, she was Rumpelstiltskin’s True Love. She never knew for sure if her affections were returned.

Now she did.

He looked ready to murder whoever had spotted them together, but his expression softened when he recognized Belle. They locked eyes for a moment, for a breath, for just long enough to see realization turn to shock, for a blink and a tear to slide down Belle’s cheek.

And then she ran.

She turned and ran away as fast as her legs could carry her, hair shipping in her face from the strong spring wind and cloak billowing out behind her. She could hardly see, but she knew he was behind her, chasing her, just like the sisters had said he would be.

The things that they told her were written on stone. She should have anticipated this, should have steeled herself and guarded her heart, but it was impossible.

Belle tried to run into the forest, to lose him among the trees and the shrubbery, but she tripped over a tree root at the very edge of the woods, and that was all the time he needed. She tried to scramble up and away, but his strong arms caught her around the waist from behind. She struggled and kicked the air, causing him to lift her off the ground at one point, but he held fast.

It was only at this point that she remembered the sisters never _did_ detail whether he caught her or not.

“Belle, stop.” The words were practically a grunt- he was stilly wiry and strong, but she was stronger than she was before.

“Let me go!” she screamed, kicking the air. “Get away from me you bloody lying _bastard_!” She wasn’t normally one to use strong language, but she thought this situation called for it.

“ _Isabelle_ _Rosanna_ _French_ , you calm the _hell_ down right now!” His grip only tightened as he sat her back down on the ground, but she managed to twist around in his arms.

“Why should I?!” she shouted directly into his face. Rumpelstiltskin blinked at the force of her words. He clearly didn’t realize the extent of what he’d done. “Why should I believe one single word you say? I thought you cared about me!”

“It has been three hundred years since I saw you-”

“And you think that’s an excuse for backing out on True Love?” The question seemed to shock him enough that he loosened his grip and she broke free, flushed and panting. It was only then that she remembered: he didn’t know that yet.

The strange thing was that he didn’t seem overly surprised by her outburst.

“How did you know?” he asked. Belle sighed.

“It’s been over four hundred years, Rum.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned her back against a tree trunk for support. “I can’t go a day without thinking about you, and it’s… it’s _horrible_.”

“Horrible?”

“ _Yes_! And then you turn around and- and go _snogging_ the princess like there’s no one else in the world and-”

“I thought you were dead,” Rumpelstiltskin deadpanned, disregarding her long winded rant.

“And frankly I don’t-” But here she cut herself off, his words sinking in. “You what?”

“I thought you were dead.” Rumpelstiltskin hung his head. “It’s not an excuse, but-”

“Why?” Belle cut him off, letting the tears continue to roll down her face. “I told you I was coming back.”

“Three hundred years. Not a sign, not a word, not even a rumor of where you might be. Every single trace, just… vanished. What else was I meant to assume?”

Belle took a step away from him. Clearly her deal with the fairies had done its work a little too well.

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“You did.” There simply weren’t any other words to say. “I think… I think you need time. I won’t ever stop fighting for you, Rum, but I’ve fought for so long and I can’t keep it up when you’re always against me.” Belle brushed herself off from her fall and prepared to leave again, except this time… this time it was of her own choosing.

She almost chose to ignore Rumpelstiltskin’s parting call.

“Belle, I… I love you.”

Almost.

Belle turned back to face him one last time, noting somewhere in her subconscious mind that this would be the last time she saw him before the curse. The last time before the world changed forever.

“Then show me. Prove it to me. The time has passed for you to tell me this, Rum. I need _more_ … and I don’t think it’s going to happen here.” She spoke slowly, deliberately, with the determination of a woman who has just set herself free from a weight long-carried. It wasn’t giving up, it was… trying a new path. There were many ways to untangle a knot, Clotho used to say, it was only that some ways were faster than others.

If the world was going to change, then perhaps it would change for the better.

And Belle turned away.

And she walked into the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, yes I did just open that up for a sequel. Depending on the response, of course. It's hanging in the balance right now...
> 
> Thank you all so much for your readership and support! I really do appreciate every one of you taking the time to read my work. 
> 
> Part 2, [Straw Into Gold](http://archiveofourown.org/works/756552) is in progress now!


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